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ACTA UNIVERSITATIS SAPIENTIAE, PHILOLOGICA, 11, 1 (2019) 7–20 DOI: 10 .2478/ausp-2019-0001 The Limit as Centre: Some Considerations on the Political Imagination of the In-Between, Starting from the Central Symbol of the Crime Series Bron/Broen – The Bridge Caius DOBRESCU University of Bucharest (Romania) Department of Literary Studies caius .dobrescu@gmail .com Abstract. The crime series Bron/Broen [The Bridge], co-produced in 2011 by the public televisions of Denmark and Sweden, located at the centre of the bridge over the Øresund/Öresund maritime strait which represents the border between the two states, offers one of the most prolific thematizations of in-between-ness in the popular culture of the last decade . The fact that it struck a chord of global collective imagination is revealed in its quick transformation into a highly successful international TV format, relocated on various other state borders . More than a theme, the series proposes an entire aesthetics of the in-between organized around the symbolic constellation of the bridge . A bridge simultaneously divides and reunites, generates empathetic fusion but also ushers in reflexive distancing. But, above all, as it is narratively and poetically framed in the series, it transgresses its common understanding as a connective interspace and tends to become a world to itself. A rather dangerous one, for that matter, since within its confines the usual distinctions between right and wrong are seriously called into doubt . From a space of transit, the bridge becomes – the distinction is essential – a space of transition, of change, of becoming . A space replete with risks but, essentially, a space of freedom . The essay attempts to unpack political implications less explored until now of this core symbolism 1. Keywords: Nordic noir, frontier, transgression, crime series, ideology, centre 1 This publication is part of “DETECt . Detecting Transcultural Identity in European Popular Crime Narratives,” a project that has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 770151. The publication reflects only the author’s view, and the Agency and the Commission are not responsible for any use that may be made of the information it contains . 8 Caius DOBRESCU The Bridge (2011–1018) is a four-season murder mystery series co-produced by DRK and SVT, the public televisions of Denmark and Sweden, and set at the frontier between the two countries . Following the path of the already established Nordic noir brand, it enjoyed a prodigious global success in itself, but it also became the first Scandinavian truly international and transcultural television format with a number of transpositions and relocations on different borders around the world: “The audience share in Denmark was about 50% . It has been sold to more than 50 countries all over the world and has also been remade in a British/French version (The Tunnel, Sky Atlantic/Canal+, Britain/France, 2013, 2015) and an American/Mexican version (The Bridge, FX, USA, 2013-14)” (Eichner and Waade 2015, 7) . The list of remakes has expanded in the meanwhile, now including the Russian–Estonian Most/Slid (2018); the Malaysian–Singaporean The Bridge (2018); the German–Austrian Der Pass/The Strait) (2019) . Beyond direct remakes, we might hypothesize the stimulating pre-eminence of the format on a whole international wave of series packaging the complex symbolism of state borders/ limits in crime narratives: Wataha/The Pack, set at the Polish–Ukrainian border (2014–2017), Okkupert/Occupied, premised on a possible overtake of Norway by Russia (2015–2017), Fauda, which boldly confronts the moral intricacies of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict (2015–), Sorjonen/Bordertown, located at the border between Finland and Russia (2016–2019), Grenseland/Borderline, involving the Norwegian–Finnish border (2017), and German productions such as Wolfsland/ Land of the Wolf (2016–), set on the German–Polish border . Given this broad sphere of expansion, it is understandable that the scholarly interest – in the light of what begins to be known as “border aesthetics” (Agnese and Amilhat Szary 2015) – concentrated on the play of signifiers occurring when the format was adapted to new cultural and intercultural contexts (Eichner and Waade 1015, García Avis 2015, Åberg 2015, Waade 2016, Jensen, Nielsen, and Waade 2016, Steiner 2017, McCabe 2019) . In the following considerations, I will adopt the complementary position of focusing on what is “repetition” rather than “transformation” – in the terms of the opposition considered as defining for adaptions by Hutcheon and O’Flynn (2013, 114) . This is to say, I will attempt to discern the core magnetism of the Bron/Broen format, which made it travel to such distances, through a phenomenological approach of “the bridge” as seminal symbolism and conceptual crux of the series . This course of interpretation is inspired and led by the paradox that a definite limit, and process of delimitation, the form in which a state border is usually conceived, can acquire the semantic corollary of a cohesive Centre . The analysis will be therefore concentrated on the bridge – neither as a physical place, as the architectonic structure that connects Denmark and Sweden over the maritime strait called Øresund in Danish and Öresund in Swedish, nor (mainly) as a mediated place (i .e . the manner in which The Limit as Centre: Some Considerations on the Political... 9 the real place is represented) but first of all as an imagined place that works as a powerful metaphor (I follow here the distinction between physical, mediated, and imagined place, based on Peirce’s semiotic triangle, formulated in Eichner and Waade 2015, 6) . Following the principles of phenomenological reduction, I will concentrate on the emerging symbolism of the bridge in the first season of the series, the one that founds and organizes the fictional universe. This is an extension of a principle formulated by Mittel (2015, 56) with respect to pilot episodes, which “must orient viewers to the intrinsic norms that the series will employ” . Hermeneutical instruments will be used to explore the political imaginary coalesced around the central symbol of the bridge . There is a wide consensus that the series promotes a political agenda aptly synthesized by Jenner: “contemporary Danish detective dramas like The Killing (Forbrydelsen, DR, 2007–12) or The Bridge (Bron/ Broen, DR/SVT, 2011–) are shaped by their contexts as Danish public service broadcasting, national debates surrounding feminism and immigration, foreign politics and the relationship between Denmark and Sweden” (2016, 3) . On the other hand, political theory has been applied on Bron/Broen and its subsequent variations from a gender perspective (e .g . Manolache 2018, McCabe 2019) . While acknowledging the relevance of the above, my framing of the matter will be different . I will attempt to interpret the layers of meaning of the bridge not according to poststructuralist political theories but starting from an Aristotelian view of political order as general equilibrium, and of mesoi, the “people at the middle”, as the most likely to keep checks and balances working. I argued elsewhere the significance of this vision for understanding the strategic value of representational arts for the imaginary foundation of modern polities (Dobrescu 2000, 2006, 2015) . My present approach is articulated with the prospective conceptualizations of a centrist political philosophy, which – with the words of Dahrendorf Forum scholar Alexandru Filip – “may be what European politics needs to revive trust in compromise, moderation, and mature reform” (Filip 2018) . With the conceptual framework and analytical focus clarified, we can turn now to the bridge itself, the physical, mediatic, and, most of all, symbolic one . The real object, with its good eight kilometres, is the longest automobile and railway bridge in Europe, but aside from this its structure is also unique: after advancing from the Swedish coast to an artificial island set in the middle of the Øresund/Öresund maritime strait, it continues through a four-kilometre tunnel to a Danish island set in the immediate vicinity of Copenhagen (O’Dell 2003, Bucken-Knapp 2003). Mediatically, the first season offers a rhythmic alternation of broad views and close-ups, taken from a fluid variety of angles, of the architectural elegance of the bridge . The panoramas and close-ups are blended in the intro in a manner that immediately transports the viewer from the physical 10 Caius DOBRESCU to the imaginary level . That is to say, the bridge appears from the very beginning as defying the commonsensical demarcation between two states . The frontier, prominently represented in the social imaginary as a dividing frontal line, is transmogrified into a bizarre route on which you are supposed to advance. The intro could be construed as a visual essay that echoes the mental unrest with respect to borders’ imagination expressed by Austrian-Swiss sociologist Dagmar Reichert: “The limit, the frontier, the boundary, time-series of boundaries, or ditches, the void, or différance, they are all modifications of the line, the form of topo-logical thinking . Can we escape this thinking in terms of spatial metaphors? Must thinking be visual? I am asking you . I don’t know myself . So strong am I bound to the picture of spatial metaphors” (1992, 95) . The opening visual experience of the pilot episode is not an attempt to escape the visual but to transform it, by substituting the crossing of the frontier with an advancement, seen through a car screen, into the night, into the unknown and the undetermined. The identification with this sense of immersion has a mind-setting power, even if we will soon learn, assumedly with a cold shiver, that that was the perspective of the killer . The frontier imaginary glides towards the diaphanous concreteness of a no man’s land, towards a space that literally emerges from the sea and generates a strange regime of physical suspension as well as a suspension of moral limits and conventions .

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